Ah the miracle of the global economy. Having just flicked through several online Irish newspapers, trawled through the websites of well-known Irish hardware stores, clothes retailers, and a host of other outlets selling furniture, garden, indoor, outdoor is very clear that:

Everyone in Ireland is coming to depend on what is happening in China…

Look around you… What are you sitting on? Typing on? Looking at? Talking into? They’re all very likely Made in China, right?

Go around your house and get rid of everything that is Made in China. Take it all away and for the next twelve months don’t buy anything from China, even if it has a Made In China component, just don’t buy it.

What would you have left? Scary isn’t it. Life would be pretty damn awkward.

This has huge consequences. Surely Chinese-made products are saving you the average shopper in Ireland hundreds if not thousands of euro a year. Chinese production and Chinese spending mean that you in Ireland get cheap goods and low interest rates.

And there is no way out…. There’s a recession, with all its belt-tightening implications, and you need to save all the money you can. So keep buying Made in China (so long as the same product is not still being made in Ireland), and if you see something from China you like but can’t find in Ireland give Accurate Group a tinkle and we’ll have you sorted in a jig.

Oh, and a final thought……………. for those of you who enjoy the savings and yet complain about the poor quality of Made in China products, China’s sweat-shop labour conditions, and the loss of Ireland’s manufacturing base to China to be blunt: ‘You can’t eat your cake and have it too’, meaning keep slamming China for its numerous inconsistencies, whether pollution, safety, quality or autocratic abuse of power-related and all those annual savings at the check-out counter of hundreds or thousands of euro will disappear. You know, killing the goose that laid the golden egg and all that…………… Ok enough. I’ll stop here and have a mug of Barry’s Tea, one taste that China can’t replicate, even if the mug, water and milk is from China, the tea from Sri Lanka, and the bag itself is from God knows where.